Findings only — no script, profile or build file changed; no release ISO built, nothing published.
documentation/audits/SPIKE-universal-iso-4-2026-07-31.md
MEASURED, with a control, and the negative control is in the SAME box. One ISO (15 GRUB entries),
a trivial probe .deb injected into /proxmox/packages/, two qm-created VMs on demo-hp (400
interactive / 401 automated control) on a scratch dir storage at the /mnt/nvme-1tb mount ROOT.
Interactive (Terminal UI) install:
- package installed (ii felhom-spike4-probe 0.0.1)
- postinst RAN (marker + content intact)
- it enabled a systemd unit, and that unit FIRED ON FIRST BOOT (uptime 7.98s, pid1=systemd)
- while on the same machine proxmox-first-boot is NOT installed and /var/lib/proxmox-first-boot
does not exist — Spike 3's negative reproduced, not assumed.
Postinst environment (identical both paths): pid1=unconfigured.sh, NO running systemd, but
'systemctl enable' SUCCEEDS; /proc+/sys mounted; network+DNS happened to be up (inherited from the
installer's DHCP — must NOT be relied on). Constraints: never systemctl start/daemon-reload, never
require network, never fail, do the real work in the unit at first boot.
Repack preserves it, but a naive 'xorriso -boot_image any replay' fails with 'Overlapping MBR
partition entries' — iso-repack.sh:270-292 already documents that exact failure and its fix.
R-153 RETRACTED into R-94 leg (b): OPEN-ITEMS.md:15 carries it verbatim at READY (XS), and R-29
says explicitly 'do not mint a new ID for a new instance'. Spike 3's further claim that the drift
leaves the generator 'three minor versions stale' was FALSE and is corrected — R-94 retracts that
exact reading; the served script is always main, so 1.22.0 is what every install already gets.
No new R-rows opened.
Findings only — no script, profile or build file changed; no release ISO built, nothing published.
documentation/audits/SPIKE-universal-iso-3-2026-07-31.md
MEASURED with a control from the SAME image (one ISO, 15 GRUB entries):
- Automated entry -> hook fires: ttyS0 marker, marker file,
/var/lib/proxmox-first-boot/proxmox-first-boot (0700), activation symlink, unit active.
- Terminal-UI entry, normal manual install -> ALL absent, and the proxmox-first-boot PACKAGE is
not installed at all. A whole-filesystem grep for the marker returns nothing.
Mechanism cited: Config.pm:118 defaults first_boot.enabled=0 and set_first_boot_opt is never
called in the Perl tree; Install.pm:746 returns early without it; Install.pm:1360 skips the
package. proxinstall (graphical) has ZERO occurrences of first-boot. [first-boot] is an
automated-installer feature, unavailable on every interactive path by construction. R-154.
A delivery mechanism DOES exist and is UNTESTED: Install.pm:1343-1372 unpacks every .deb in the
ISO's /proxmox/packages/ into the target on every path (fixed skip-list), then dpkg --configure -a
runs postinsts (:1378) — how PVE ships first-boot itself. Read from source, not measured.
Q5: the public image should carry NO answer.toml at all — that removes the baked root hash, the
disk profile and the whole Spike 1-2 problem space, and makes it a one-line release gate. But
iso-repack.sh:100-106 refuses an ISO without auto-installer-mode.toml. R-155.
Incidental R-153: hub hostInstallVersion=1.19.0 vs SCRIPT_VERSION=1.22.0; hostinstall_gates.py
detects it and exits 1 — the gate works, nothing runs it.
Q3 (real stub at before-network) was NOT reached and is recorded as not reached.
Findings only — no script, profile or build file changed; no ISO built, nothing published.
documentation/audits/SPIKE-universal-iso-2-2026-07-31.md
Both Tier 0 boxes went offline mid-session (provider cable fault; four routes tried, no Tier 2
fallback used) and returned. All three scenarios then ran to completion on real PVE, each signalled
by reboot-mode='power-off' rather than a disk hash.
- A LOCKED ROOT CLOSES THE PVE WEB INTERFACE. Measured at the exact endpoint the UI uses
(POST /api2/json/access/ticket, root@pam) WITH A WORKING CONTROL: known-password install returns
HTTP 200 + ticket; locked install returns 401 for every password and none can exist.
passwd -S root = L, shadow = literal-asterisk, PVE uses the stock PAM stack.
- GRUB recovery mode is also closed ('the root account is locked') — but init=/bin/bash still gives
an unauthenticated root@(none):/#. A locked box is recoverable, operator-only, at the console.
The installed GRUB has NO password, so locking root is not a physical-security measure. R-152.
- before-network MEASURED (A/B, same image): the hook RUNS (marker, uptime 6.58s) with entropy 256,
writable /etc, all binaries and openssl_rand_len=32, while ip_global is EMPTY and
listen_22_8006 = 0. fully-up is the converse: sshd+pveproxy active, 3 listening. Zero window.
- R-148: answer.toml.tmpl:27 justifies fully-up with a pvesh/pct dependency the stub does not have
(grep rc=1) — it blocked the ordering now measured as the fix.
- R-149 three ordering values; R-150 Condition-guarded hooks skip silently; R-151 demo-felhom built
from an uncommitted profile.
Three probes failed and are recorded as failed: a container probe that ran as uid 0, a GRUB probe
that missed the 1-second menu timeout, and a kernel-line edit one line off (caught by a pre-typing
verification screendump). The interim 'Layer 1 teardown INCOMPLETE' is corrected — the fixture had
never landed, because the staging mkdir was in the SSH call that timed out.
Findings only — no script, profile or build file changed; no ISO built, nothing published.
documentation/audits/SPIKE-universal-iso-2-2026-07-31.md
BOTH Tier 0 boxes went offline mid-session (remote site, 12:28 CEST; four routes tried, our
tailscale pod healthy). Q1/Q2/Q3 each keep a part needing a nested VM: those are BLOCKED, not
answered. DooPlex was NOT used as a fallback — Tier 2, and this task did not authorise it.
Established without them:
- STRUCTURAL: ordering='before-network' maps to proxmox-first-boot-network-pre.service
(Before=network-pre.target, Type=oneshot) — it completes before ANY interface is configured,
so a rotation there has a zero-length window BY CONSTRUCTION, not by being fast.
- R-148: the stub does not need 'fully-up'. stub-first-boot.sh has no pvesh/pct/pveum/qm call
(grep rc=1); that usage is in felhom-bootstrap.sh under its own After=network-online unit.
answer.toml.tmpl:27 justifies the current ordering with a dependency that does not exist.
- R-149: the ordering enum has THREE values (before-network, network-online, fully-up), not two.
- MECHANISM (container, not PVE): locked root closes sulogin — 'the root account is locked' for
both '*' and '!', with a working control. So 'discard' and 'lock' are the SAME outcome for
recovery, making the escrow decision binary.
- R-150: all four proxmox-first-boot-* units are Condition-guarded; a failed condition is a SKIP,
so a hook that never ran looks identical to one that succeeded.
- R-151: demo-felhom was installed from an UNCOMMITTED profile — a Tier 0 reference box is not
reproducible from main.
- Q4: four gates in iso-repack.sh enforce the single-entry menu; default/timeout already settable.
The first mechanism probe was invalid (uid 0 bypassed pam_unix; sulogin had no tty) and a teardown
error (shredding the control plaintext) are both recorded as failures, not massaged.
demo-hp teardown is INCOMPLETE and named as such; the command is recorded, not claimed done.
Findings only — no script, profile or build file changed; no ISO built, nothing published.
documentation/audits/SPIKE-universal-iso-2026-07-31.md
- R-139 (HIGH): a disk filter matching >1 device does NOT fail safe. Observed in a nested VM —
the installer silently picked one of two matching disks and wiped it; validate-answer accepts
such an answer. The 'filter did not match any devices' guard covers the ZERO-match case only.
- No udev property distinguishes an internal system disk from external media. Measured on
demo-felhom with its 1TB external attached: ID_BUS='ata' for BOTH, lsblk RM=0 for both, and
device-info exposes no removability property. demo-hp's NVMe carries no ID_BUS/ID_TYPE at all.
- R-141 (HIGH): the answer schema makes a root credential mandatory, but root-password-hashed='*'
validates AND installs to completion. [first-boot].ordering accepts 'before-network', the only
ordering that closes the exposure window structurally.
- Q3: prepare-iso leaves grub.cfg byte-identical to stock (15 entries, automated AND interactive)
— a two-entry menu is purely a Felhom grub.cfg.tmpl change.
- R-129 resolved: demo-hp's key is the operator's own, added post-install; demo-felhom's IS baked
by an uncommitted profile.
The reachable-before-rotation measurement FAILED twice and is recorded as failed, not inferred.
Opens R-139..R-147; restates R-128.
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